DayZ

For this week's Status Report, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be informing us on what the team has been working on for the upcoming update on Stable branch. In this regard he'll go over subjects such as the loot distribution and persistence.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight

Dev Update/Hicks

Community Video: I'M HUNTING

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors!

The team has been crunching away on our last blockers for stable release, as well as working on values for loot distribution. Tomorrow morning we should see our (hopeful) final experimental release hit Steam, which will be tested over the weekend. Assuming we notice no new issues, we're hoping to hit stable branch on Monday or Tuesday next week.

The only issue we currently see as a blocker on experimental (0.58.128852) is visually represented as "floating loot" currently caused by an issue with items that have been "swapped" by players. (Most commonly seen as loot floating above deer stands, police stations, etc). As mentioned above, tomorrow should see an experimental push that will see this resolved - and this build will be tested over the weekend to see its viability for Stable Branch.

While this fix has been underway, we've been dialing in the balance for non perishable food, firearms, and military loot. Currently, the highest quantity and priority in the economy is given to non perishable food goods. (Tuna, Beans, Rice, etc). With civilian pistols being the most common firearm, followed by civilian rifles such as the trumpet, blaze, IZH43 Shotgun, and so on. Military loot is distributed across all military points across the map, mostly of which are up in the Northern areas. Military grade firearms are relatively rare, and there is no guarantee that visiting the military bases will yield you the weapon you want. With most items on a 30 minute timer (without being "refreshed" by being manipulated by players) - getting fully kitted up as a "military" player with all the gear you want could take some time.

Super Rare items (M4A1, Steyr Aug, SVD, and so on) that spawn on dynamic events operate on an even rarer chance. Dynamic events have a varied pool of potential items that can spawn, with only 3 active helicopter wrecks at any given time - and an approximate 4 hour clean up, continued hunting will be required to find that super rare weapon or item you are seeking.

Please keep in mind, we are now fully able to update quantities and rarity without requiring an update - so if we should see issues with loot concentration, or quantity once .58 hits stable branch, we will be able to address this rapidly.

Fortunately, players can now create camps and store their supplies and weapons at them during their treks across Chernarus. Different containers / objects have different lifetimes. Currently, they operate as follows:

- Medium Tent (Pitched): 45 Days

- Military Tent (Pitched): 45 Days

- Car Tent (Pitched): 45 Days

- Barrels: 45 Days

- Ammo Boxes: 45 Days

- Protector Cases: 45 Days

- Backpacks (All types): 3 Days

Current functionality on experimental does not allow for refreshing the lifetime of an object without picking it up, so tents and barrels were set to a lifetime that will cover the time to .59 + some safety room in case of .59 stable blockers. Once .59 is pushed to stable, we will support the refresh of a base objects lifetime via interacting with it (moving, placing, picking up any item inside it) - which will operate as follows:

- Medium Tent (Pitched): 7 Days

- Military Tent (Pitched): 7 Days

- Car Tent (Pitched): 7 Days

- Barrels: 7 Days

- Ammo Boxes: 7 Days

- Protector Cases: 7 Days

- Backpacks (All types): 3 Days

This system will also allow for the refreshing of advanced basebuilding objects, once they are implemented.

Speaking of advanced base building - I'll be speaking at RTX 2015 in Austin, Texas on Saturday, August 8th at 5:30 PM to discuss a recap of things covered at E3 2015, what we'd like to do with advanced base building, what soft skills means exactly, and show the new vehicles coming in 0.59. For those unable to make it, we'll be providing the presentation + audio in the Status Report following the event (Wednesday, August 12th).

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Community Video: I'M HUNTING

Hey survivors,

While looking for some videos of players doing some hunting and fishing while living the hermit lifestyle in Chernarus, I came across a video simply called "I'M HUNTING". I could see in the description that it was probably not exactly what I was looking for, but I decided to give it a go just the same. Sure enough, the content didn't disappoint. In the video we get to see a glimpse of the unjust killing of a freshspawn and the subsequent hunt and sweet, sweet revenge towards the end.

The video was brought to us by the following content creator: Musse Plays

As always, if you have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in the Gallery[forums.dayzgame.com] section of the DayZ forums and we'll happily have a look.

Header image credit: Jack Smith

- Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

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Status Report - 21 Jul 2015

07 月 21 日

Greetings Survivors,

For this week we have a bit of info on a subject which many of you have been enquiring about - Persistence. Our Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be talking a bit about what the team has been working as of late in regards to persistence, and also, he will fill us in a bit in relation to both server performance as well as player position desync. Also, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny will inform us of the work being conducted on vehicles. This includes both upcoming vehicles as well as operation/maintenance of these.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight

Dev Update/Hicks

Dev Update/Peter

Community Video: Epic Melee Fight

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

The team is still working hard on the last few issues blocking a stable release of 0.58 - I'll highlight a few of them in this Status Report as well as go into how some of the changed systems are now operating, and how they should be operating once 0.58 hits stable.

Last we discussed:

- Server Performance (Degrading)

This issue has been resolved, and we're seeing a 3x increase in server performance on the current 0.58. As well, the degrading curve of server performance over large spans of time has been resolved. Thus, the experimental branch servers will be operating on a 12 hour restart schedule now.

- Player Position Desync

Still being worked on, the gameplay programmers have made some improvements on this issue - but its still not where we would like it to be for stable. We'll continue to iterate on this, and keep you apprised in the Status Reports. For now, current experimental servers should show a marked improvement in this area.

Now onto the meat for this week. As frequent experimental branch users are aware, we've been operating experimental with full persistence enabled. Dynamic events have been respawning, and cleaning up - and we've been conducting extensive testing on Quantity Maximum Cleanup, and Lifetime Cleanup.

The above picture shows the loot concentration (against a black backdrop for our color blind users) right after last Friday's experimental update. The item quantity sits right around an average of 21,000 items globally.

This picture, shows the same server - 3 days later. The item quantity is *the same* (Approx 21,000 items globally) but the saturation is much lower, with the items massively spread out across the map. This issue can be tied to two issues - One, lifetime (age of a particular item) cleanup not functioning for items "dropped" on the ground - and per building maximum not yet functioning.

Todays experimental build is aimed at resolving both of those issues. With the first iteration of per-building maximums, and bug fixing on item lifetime cleanup, we'll be monitoring the loot heat maps - as well as aiming for another experimental update tomorrow (assuming everything works out alright) with point-of-interest structure limits.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Dev Update/Peter

Transportation in DayZ is a crucial part of gameplay, especially on such a large landscape as Chernarus offers. Whenever you want to reach inland for a higher chance to find better loot, get to the Chernogorsk hospital for medical supplies to help your friend in need or ambush the bandit camp hidden in the woods - hiking is the least viable option. As you want to reach your goal as fast as possible, you find yourself looking for the vehicle which suits your current needs best. Version 0.59 will come with a big update to vehicles content and I'm happy to see it's shaping up pretty well. You can look forward to a car fest with 3 completely new vehicles made from scratch just for DayZ including a slick sedan, a sturdy off-road and a spacious bus. All of these vehicles will have different handling characteristics and specifications you can experience in real life for example bigger turning radius and slower acceleration of the bus, higher top speeds of the sedan or perfect contact with uneven surfaces of off-road.

Apart from that as I mention earlier we are adding long awaited vehicle parts. To repair and maintain your vehicle you will also need to utilize a broad spectrum of tools already available in game, may it be the lug wrench for mounting the wheels, screwdriver to attach the doors or wrench to connect the battery. Some of the tools will have specialized purposes like the lug wrench while others will be used for more interactions within vehicle and its parts. I want to see characters using their tools directly from hands interacting with the exposed parts of the vehicle to reinforce the visceral experience of actual activity. All vehicles and their parts were designed, modeled and prepared according to this goal so I hope it will turn out really well and adds to more sophisticated gameplay instead of instant abstract actions.

I will end my part of Status Report in a bit hyped spirit with insight into the future where I can see vehicles like helicopters, planes, boats and bikes. (Of course we're doing bicycles!).

Keep those tools handy... see you in Chernarus folks!

Peter Nespesny / Lead Designer

Community Video: Epic Melee Fight

Yay!!! For this week we bring you yet another one of those videos that show what some players are up to when not so much focusing on deatchmatch battles at NWAF or living out the hermit lifestyle in the outer rim of the map. There's not so much to it really; one rooftop, 11 players, and no firearms whatsoever. Take a couple of minutes if you will and let yourself be entertained by the chaotic brawl that ensues once the referee reaches the end of his countdown.

The video was most kindly brought to us by TopeREC TV. If you have a couple of minutes to spare, I highly recommend that you take a look at his channel.

You can also follow TopeREC via the following channels:

http://twitter.com/TopeREC

http://www.twitch.tv/toperec

http://www.facebook.com/Toperec

As always, if you have a nice video containing DayZ footage you'd like to share, or if you have come across some DayZ footage from other content creators, just post it in the Gallery[forums.dayzgame.com] section of the DayZ forums and we'll happily have a look.

Header image credit: Tydirium

- Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

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Status Report - 15 Jul 2015

07 月 15 日

Greetings Survivors,

Yet another week is checked off the calendar as the team moves forward with development of DayZ. In this week's Status Report, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be filling us in on the challenges the team faces while on the road towards the next Stable branch update. Additionally, Brian will hand out a bit more info/updates in regards to the current state of persistence on 0.58 over on the Experimental branch.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight

Dev Update/Hicks

Community Spotlight: Carrot Survivor

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors!

As we're in crunch to resolve the last few blocking issues for 0.58 we don't have too much *new news*. That said, we'll use this weeks Status Report to fill you in on the issues we're currently focused on resolving for 0.58, as well as some small changes to Experimental Branch over the last week.

Player Position Desync:

This issue has been present in a pretty bad state on 0.57, so obviously we want to do what we can to improve the situation for 0.58. No one enjoys having their character get stuck in one spot, or have someone they're in conflict with bounce all over their screen. While we'll probably not get this issue 100% resolved for this update, our aim is to mitigate it as much as possible and present as enjoyable an experience on stable branch as is possible within a reasonable amount of time for bugfixing. We'll be pushing test updates to experimental branch as work on this moves forward.

Degrading Server Performance:

Internally we have noticed severe performance drops on 0.58 experimental, below what we consider to be the acceptable line for a playable dev build. The team has focused on investigating the cause of this issue, and resolving it so as to return the build to a playable state. This, like the issue with player position desync is marked as a blocker for 0.58 stable release.

As well, we discussed last week the goal of having the gameplay programmers resolve the issue of animation glitching for 0.58. With the issues listed above, specifically player position desynchronization being a much more critical issue - priority on the animation glitching (weapon swapping, holding an invisible weapon) has been rescheduled for 0.59, in order to give the proper resources to resolving the issues listed above.

That said - with 0.58 large strides have been made on the loot respawning, and cleanup issues. Allowing us to look forward to the reintroduction of persistent objects frequently used with the building of player camps.

The following functionality is currently present on 0.58 persistence:

Vehicle Position

Vehicle Inventory

Attached Vehicle Parts (W/ Exception to Tires & Fuel Levels)

Barrel Locations & Inventory

Horticulture Plots

Fireplaces & Ovens

Tents (Camping, Military, Car) Locations & Inventory

Containers (Ammo Canisters, Backpacks, etc)

And of course - the base item persistence is functioning as well. Item cleanup & respawn should ensure that the economy functions at a base enjoyable level. If you encounter or spawn near a small village that seems to be barren, just continue on to the next town. Mapping the concentration of loot over the span of a week on experimental has shown proper saturation across the map, so there is a high chance that the next town will have everything you need!

As well, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny will be discussing our goals for vehicle maintenance (tools, parts, etc) on the Official DayZ forums[forums.dayzgame.com] later today. Make sure to head over, and let your voice be heard!

Lastly, as we look to pushing 0.58 to Stable Branch - We'll be issuing a full reset of the hive (private shard and public shard characters) as well as a full wipe of existing persistence.

We still have a long way to go, but 0.58 should be a fun build to play on - and 0.59 looks to be even better!

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Community Spotlight: Carrot Survivor

Hey all,

So, for this week it is time yet again for one of the DayZ content creators that have a mixed bag of goodies in his library. Without too much fuss; for this week we'll present you a couple of the videos created by: Carrot Survivor

Ahhh, the sweet sweet randomness when players take off into Chernarus to meet and engage other players sometimes in dialogue, sometimes in firefights. Our small selection of Carrot Survivor's videos depict the following settings:

1. An encounter where Carrot Survivor hooks up with two other random players. Eventually the group takes fire, and the guys subsequently have to figure out a way to deal with a pair of less than friendly players situated by the docks in Cherno.

2. An unusual encouter where Carrot and a friend engage in a firefight with another player by Veresnik military base. They end up taking the player hostage, yet the encounter ends in a way you might not necessarily expect:

3. Yet another hostile encounter where things do not go entirely quite as planned, neither for Carrot Survivor nor for his aggressor (dear god, Carrot's screaming is used liberally in several videos and it cracks me up every single time):

As always, if interested in more, please feel free to follow Carrot Survivor via his Twitter and Youtube accounts:

Twitter

Youtube

Also, for this month we have an update on the bugfiler(s) for the month of june. As always, Darcion contributed with a load of issues for June, but we'd also like to recognize the efforts of Zyryanoff (again) as well as Impulz. A huge thanks goes out to all of you who took the time to file the bugs you came across in DayZ!

Header image credit: Jack Smith

- Michael aka SMoss / Community Manager

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Status Report - 08 Jul 2015

07 月 8 日

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight[dayz.com]

Dev Update/Hicks[dayz.com]

Dev Update/Peter[dayz.com]

RTX 2015[dayz.com]

Community Video: "AUS vs UK - Round 1"[dayz.com]

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

This week I'd like to recap some of the upcoming changes to stable (when 0.58 goes live) for those that are not up to date with Experimental Branch. Once 0.58 goes live, we can start discussing 0.59 plans and intent.

Guardhouse Buildings:

As work is underway on regional control over the central loot economy, in the interim the guardhouse structures spread across the entirety of the map will not be spawning any loot. This is done to preserve the restriction of high end military loot to the military bases and camps inland in Chernarus. The structures themselves remain enter-able, but until regional control is implemented on stable branch - they will remain without spawning loot.

Land_Mil_House

The structure some folks have referred to as the "Camo Building" or the "Jail House" has been problematic for some time. We've issued hotfixes, and addressed several bugs related to it - but the core issue that needs to be addressed is on the player controller. Rather than continue to issue small hotfixes (otherwise known as bandages on a broken leg) the issue needs to be resolved at the cause. To that end, the loot that would normally be spawning within these structures will be redistributed to other military buildings (tents, camps, barracks, etc)

"Ghost Sounds"

Those who have played DayZ throughout its Early Access development are probably no stranger to the notorious "ghost sounds" bug. Splitting ammo, bandaging, opening soda cans, etc being partially played, and well outside of the range of the actual sound effect. Fortunately, during 0.58 development we were able to get some of the gameplay programmers time to look into this issue, and we are now confident that on 0.58 the issue has been finally slain. So be very aware after the next stable update, if you *hear* a sound effect playing - it IS near you. Be careful out there!

Wrecks (Non interactive)

With work on the central loot economy continuing, and the functionality of how it operates being iterated upon - Non interactive wrecks (tanks, destroyed UAZ's, etc) have been removed from the loot spawning tables, and the environment team will begin using them in their "devastation passes" across Chernarus. As with other structures, items that would normally spawn there will be redistributed across Chernarus. Note: This does NOT include interactive wrecks, such as vehicles you can open the trunks/doors/etc on.

Animation Glitching

The gameplay programming team is currently investigating the cause and symptom behind the notorious animation glitching bug. (Weapon swapping constantly) As well as the issues with dropping your weapon when vaulting. The weapon vaulting fix should be coming to experimental soon, and it is the aim of the team internally to also include a fix toward the weapon swapping animation bug.

Loot Respawning / Persistence Enabling

Persistence itself has been functioning for some time, the cause behind it being manually disabled on 0.57 stable servers is tied to an issue with loot respawning. We're aiming to have this issue resolved before we push 0.58 to stable branch, once we've tested this on experimental and are confident in the fix - players will be able to resume making camps, storing gear, and so on.

Similar issues with dynamic event cleanup and respawn were the cause of static dynamic events - and these issues are currently being investigated, and are marked critical for the 0.58 launch.

In addition to these issues, bugs related to severe player position desyncronization are currently being investigated, and flagged as a must fix for 0.59.

I hope this brief list of information pertaining to 0.58 helps update those who may have not kept a close eye on the experimental branch updates.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Read the full Status Report on the DayZ Devhub[dayz.com]

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Status Report - 30 Jun 2015

06 月 30 日

Greetings Survivors,

While development keeps moving along as usual, a lot of you have patiently been waiting for info on the new renderer, and for this week's Status Report Lead Producer Brian Hicks touches upon that very subject. Also, Senior Designer Jan Tomasik gives us some input on the ingame FOV; the theory and thought process behind the design solutions as well as decisions for the current iteration of FOV.

For this week we also present you with a link to the DayZ Trello board where Lead Artist Chris Torchia provides us with a small peek at environment updates, and lastly, we have a small feature on one of DayZ's content creators - Super Dan.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight [dayz.com]

Dev Update/Hicks [dayz.com]

Dev Update/Jan [dayz.com]

Community Spotlight: Super Dan [dayz.com]

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com]

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

This week we'll touch on two topics. We'll start off discussing the work ongoing with the new renderer for Enfusion, and then wrap up discussing the current behaviour and mechanics behind sprinting, holding breath, and so on.

Players who have been actively following the development of DayZ are aware of the large task the engine team undertook to separate the legacy RV renderer from the simulation, and replace it with a more modular and updated version. The task itself of creating a new renderer is not huge, the length and weight of the task is related primarily to:

Separating the legacy renderer from the simulation

Ensuring the separation is complete, as the RV engine and its functions tied to it are extensive

Once the above was complete, the new renderer itself was broken into three primary modules. (Bear with us, this can be moderately technical)

Pipeline module (1)

the pipeline of objects rendering is new (defines the "way" how the objects are moving from entity in world to set of rendering commands)

is responsible to prepare meshes to be rendered

is multi-threaded

filling of pipeline will be also multi-threaded, in phase of testing and debugging

Material system module (2)

objects are rendered using new material system, old one is still present to have the comparison

each mesh has assigned a material (not rvmat) with material class which is responsible for it's rendering

setting of material is editable in workbench editor and you see real-time the changes in render

each material class was written from scratch, visualisation currently as much similar as possible to old render but now we can add simply new features (like PBR)

Next up - There has been a good deal of discussion, and questions on exactly how hold breath, lung capacity, and dispersion when characters are tired. Below we have a few example videos with debug data on screen so you can see the specific values.

In the first video you see the user start out stationary - not tired, and begin to hold his breath. With the inaccuracy value falling sharply upon holding his breath, as the character continues to hold his breath and his lung capacity drains - the inaccuracy slowly starts climbing.

With the second video, we have a character who starts off tired (has been sprinting for an extended duration - 90 to 120 seconds of solid sprinting) who takes a knee (supported firing position) as his tired value decreases, his lung capacity increases - and he begins to hold his breath.

Mind you, this is only how it performs now (on 0.57 stable) and this is prior to the implementation of weight and character stamina. That said, we would love to hear your thoughts on the current behavior of the mechanic. Please make sure to head over to the Official DayZ forums and discuss this in the latest Status Report discussion thread!

Finally - the gameplay programming team has made headway on the annoying issue of sounds playing globally (splitting ammo, bandages, etc) and 0.58 should see the issue resolved! If you happen to still manage to repro, please open a ticket at

- Brian Hicks/ Lead Producer

For the full Status Report, please have a look at our DayZ Devhub[dayz.com]

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Status Report - 23 Jun 2015

06 月 23 日

Greetings Survivors,

As the team continues pushing development of DayZ, we have Brian, Chris, and Viktor providing us with a peek at what is on the plate for the team. For this week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will discuss development going forwards in regards to the DayZ audio module, while Lead Artist Chris Torchia will discuss the decision making behind the firearms design, and Lead Animator Viktor Kostik will discuss the development of transitioning the player character across to the new animation system.

Like always, we have a couple of links to our DayZ Trello board, and towards the end of this weeks' Status Report we showcase a video showing an interesting game session springing forth from a Vybor spawn.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight [dayz.com]

Dev Update/Hicks [dayz.com]

E3 - DayZ PC Gaming Show 2015 [dayz.com]

Dev Update/Chris [dayz.com]

Dev Update/Viktor [dayz.com]

Community Video: "Long Story Short - I Got a Vybor Spawn" [dayz.com]

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com][trello.com]

Dev Update/Hicks

Greetings Survivors,

Its been a hectic few weeks, with 0.57 release and E3 - but I'd like to take some time out this week to discuss pending changes to the Audio side of the Enfusion engine, as well as some critical audio bugs plaguing DayZ Early Access players.

We've talked about replacing the existing Audio system in DayZ with a new Audio module better suited to DayZ's needs, but we haven't really outlined what some of that means. As many players may know, the inherited audio technology from the Real Virtuality (TKOH / Arma 2) side of the family has its strengths, but it also has quite a few weaknesses. As we began looking at the time and resources required to update this portion of our base engine, we looked at several key areas we wanted to improve:

- 3D Positional Ambient Sound: Supporting true 3D Positional Ambient sounds is integral to proper immersion within Chernarus. As well, once we support this - the roar of the coast, and the confusing positional ambient noises should be a thing of the past.

- More complex configuration options for vehicles, weapons, etc: Current technology supports a very basic methodology for potential sounds and triggering events for weapons, vehicles and the likes. Moving to the new Audio module will begin to allow the design and audio teams to implement more complex audio configurations for items and vehicles in game.

As development on this portion of the engine continues, we'll be looking at other features existing internal projects offer (such as Arma 3's tech) to ensure that the support the Enfusion engine offers is as comprehensive as we can allow.

In addition to this, work has continued internally on slaying the ever illusive audio bug beast known as "Ghost sounds" - Potential headway was revealed during a conference between key members of the Arma, and DayZ teams. Potential related causes of the issue, as well as fixes implemented on the Arma side of the company are hopefully going to be implemented. We'll be testing this out on experimental hopefully with 0.59 - I'll be speaking with people about this on the official DayZ forums when we begin testing, and anyone encountering the issue at that point is strongly encouraged to utilize the Feedback Tracker.

See you all in Chernarus!

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

E3 - DayZ PC Gaming Show 2015

Also, we have a little bit of info in regards to modding and the singleplayer part of DayZ in the following video featuring Brian Hicks at this year's E3 convention. Thanks and props go out to the fine people of DayZ Underground for providing the video!

For the full Status Report, please have a look at our DayZ Devhub[dayz.com]

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Status Report - 09 Jun 2015

06 月 9 日

Greetings Survivors,

Work continues on experimental branch as the team keeps hammering away at the next Stable build candidate. It's been a tough wait, we understand, but major issues encountered during development required fixing before the push to Stable branch. This week, Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be dishing out some handy information regarding the Central Loot Economy - what it is, how it's supposed to work, as well as the thought process behind the design choices for the CLE. Also, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny will be telling us about future updates to the vehicles found throughout Chernarus. Peter will go over subjects such as operation, maintenance, as well as the design choices behind these upcoming updates.

Lastly, we have a couple of links[forums.dayzgame.com] to the DayZ Trello board and DayZ forums discussion thread related to the new bus animations, and at the end of our Status Report, we have a small feature on one of DayZ's content creators - Barely Infected.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight[dayz.com]

Dev Update/Hicks[dayz.com]

Dev Update/Peter[dayz.com]

Community Spotlight: Barely Infected[dayz.com]

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com][trello.com][trello.com]

Dev Update - Hicks

With 0.57 on the horizon, this week I'd like to take time to talk a bit about player progression across Chernarus, the Central Loot Economy (and its impact on this), and the challenges DayZ faces compared to the Arma 2 Mod experience.

First lets go over exactly what the Central Loot Economy is, and what it offers DayZ.

- Migration of control over what items spawn from legacy method (script) into a more easily and rapidly updated system

- This means the dev team can rapidly (and without requiring an update to the game) completely change / update the amount of items that spawn

- This is done on both a global, and a per server level - in the future allowing custom server operators fine control over their server and its item spawn quantities without requiring any base modification to the game

- Control over item lifetimes (speed of decay / time to item cleanup)

- Control over how many of each item time is supposed to be present in the world (Min / Max / Nominal)

- Control over item cost (rarity vs spawning methods)

Why is the Central Loot Economy critical to DayZ's design - versus the original prototype placeholder loot spawning script? Simply put - the original method was a very rough prototype, designed to start populating the initial memory points for each structure. In order for the design and environment teams to be fully free to create a comprehensive, living breathing world - we first needed to begin to have fine and robust control that can be rapidly pushed to all servers. The original prototype method was very time resource heavy for updating, limited our options to traditional DayZ Mod style building definitions only, and in short pidgeon-holed the team into very limited control.

One of the images that has been circulating the DayZ Community over the last week is a map covering player progression across Arma 2's original Chernarus map. The layout of the original Chernarus, as well as the very limited amount of enterable structures, and thus very limited amount of potential spawn points for items meant an inherent flow of player movement across the map. It required very little work on the design side - High end military loot spawned mostly entirely at Barracks structures, Basic Supplies / Weapons at Firestations, Grocery Stores, Barns, and so on, and Medical supplies at Hospitals. The structure of *how* items spawned within the original Chernarus just -fit- the limited scope of that map perfectly.

Moving into DayZ as a standalone project, one of the first tasks undertaken was the decentralization of core resource (points of interest) buildings - and the expansion of Chernarus into a more robust and living world. Nearly every structure was made enter-able, and thus nearly every single building on the map was a potential (or group of potential) points for items to spawn. At first this might not seem like it should have a major impact on the design, and flow of player progression across the map - but when you look at the statistics, it is rather telling.

For a look at the full Status Report, please feel free to have a look at the DayZ Devhub[dayz.com]

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Status Report - 02 Jun 2015

06 月 2 日

Greetings Survivors,

As the team continues iterating and testing on experimental while moving towards the upcoming stable update, We'll hear Lead Producer Brian Hicks discuss a bit of the methodology behind dynamic events and vehicle positions versus player spawn locations. As well, Lead Designer Peter Nespesny discusses ongoing testing work over on the experimental branch related to player data updates, and scheduling.

As well, we've tossed in some links [trello.com] to the Development Board entry for Hermit Playstyle enhancements, and their accompanying discussion thread on the Developer forums. Check the end of the Status Report for some heart pounding Player Vs Vehicle action outside the Veresnik Military Base.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight[]

Dev Update/Hicks[]

Dev Update/Peter[]

Community Video: The battle of the V3S's[]

Development Board Spotlight

[forums.dayzgame.com]

Dev Update - Hicks

I'm frequently asked about player spawns, vehicle spawns, and the mentality behind where and why they are placed. I thought I would take the opportunity this week to discuss exactly that.

For those aware of how DayZ Mod's gameplay flow operated - it was fairly simple. Players started along the coast - from Kamenka to as far as Berezino. Players progressed (for the most part) from the South - to the North. (For the most part, the North West) This gameplay required very little design side control to influence it. Natively the original Chernarus had very few buildings, and thus very few potential item spawn points (compared to say - Chernarus +). One of the initial goals of DayZ was to decentralize the flow of high value or required resources. Think medical centers, military installations, and so on.

When approaching player spawns - early on my approach was to try and replicate the familiarity of player spawns in the earlier versions of DayZ Mod. (DayZ Mod circa Summer 2012 was used as a touch stone) We quickly learned that this approach did not work with the massively altered layout of Chernarus. Not to mention some of the changes to key coastal areas. The next experiment we ran with player spawns was to flip the map of Chernarus, and look at the player progression as East > West. From a design perspective this approach seemed the most logical in how we wanted to layout the world, and seemed on paper like it should find strong success.

Never let it be said that nostalgia and familiarity has no merit.

Players were very vocal in their longing for the familiar DayZ spawn points, Chernogorsk and Elektrozavodsk especially. Internally we were very reluctant to change this up as the early loot spawning system did not allow us any region control, and the design of Chernarus was heavily leaning towards letting us use any building model we wanted, where it made sense. (Think Military Police buildings in Chernogorsk, Balota Barracks, etc) However, as early prototyping on a more robust control over where region-wise certain items spawned, the idea of spawning in some of those core DayZ Mod areas was revisited. Obviously some small changes would need to occur to the layout of the world, as the system would take a good deal of time to develop - so Balota and the Northeast Airfield both got a redesign - and spawns from Kamyshovo to West Chernogorsk were reintroduced.

As Dynamic Events, and Vehicles entered the equation their spawn placements were heavily influenced by where the existing player spawns lay, and how we wanted the flow of players across the map to operate. Obviously Dynamic Event types used to prototype the system were also used as a control point for "Very Rare" items - with the desired intent to ensure that in the final product, players could not farm one location across many servers to quickly gain an item the design team intended to be incredibly hard to find. (See: SVD)

Vehicles themselves followed a similar principle, as the prototype vehicle was a heavy vehicle designed to carry large amounts of both gear and players - the spawn positions for this were placed at the highest concentration in West / Northwest. As smaller, more civilian vehicles begin to be implemented we'll see more spawn types for them a bit closer to where player spawns are located.

I hope this brief look into the thought process behind these areas helps you to understand how they evolve a bit better.

See you all in Chernarus!

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Read the full Status Report on the DayZ Devhub [dayz.com]

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Status Report - 26 May 15

05 月 27 日

Greetings Survivors,

This week we're switching over to a new Status Report format, and merging in some of the community focused features from the dev hub into a single weekly report. We'll need to work a few kinks out over the coming weeks, so bear with us as we get this new format to the structure we want. 0.56/0.57 Development continues over on the experimental branch - the team is rapidly approaching a candidate ready for a stable branch update.

This weeks Status Report features info on E3, goals for the 0.56/0.57 stable update, and some outstanding charity efforts by DayZ community members.

And remember - the latest news and info on DayZ development is always available via the Dev Hub.

Contents This Week

Development Board Spotlight[]

Dev Update[]

DayZ @ E3[]

Community Video: Always Burning[]

Development Board Spotlight

[trello.com][trello.com]Back to Contents[]

Dev Update

Those watching the experimental branch over the last few weeks have seen a high frequency of updates, configuration changes, and restarts as the development team ramped up volume and stress testing in preperation for the stable branch update. Strong gains in server side performance were made, and thanks to player stress testing on experimental branch - critical issues were identified in the performance of infected AI. With the gains in over all performance (server side) with player and simulation handling, we were able to isolate and identify the AI related issues - and the gameplay programming team is hard at work on resolving those issues.

In the mean time, as development continues - a firm red line on server side performance for stable branch has been established. This is to ensure an enjoyable experience, as well as reduce the amount of noise to signal ratio on the feedback tracker, and greatly improve the quality of repro steps, and critical identified issues coming in from that branch.

Over all, we expect that the experience will be significantly more enjoyable than 0.55 (but not where we want it to be for the release from Early Access)

In the interest of getting an update to stable branch as soon as possible, work on the programming side will continue internally on several key issues identified by players on that branch in 0.55 / 0.56 experimental.

- Intelligent spawning per building / Item per building capacity limits

- AI Performance costs (Infected - Animal)

As these systems are actively being worked on by the gameplay programming team - the stable branch update will have the spawning of infected, and the persistence disabled on stable branch servers. This is only a temporary measure while these two issues continue to be worked on, and we'll see both base building, and infected return with a vengeance as soon as possible.

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Back to Contents[]

DayZ @ E3

DayZ Lead Producer Brian Hicks will be speaking about modding, and DayZ server hosting at the AMD PC Gaming Conference [www.pcgamingshow.com]Tuesday June 16th.

Hosted by Sean 'Day[9]' Plott, the PC Gaming Show will take place at the Belasco Theater in Los Angeles on Tuesday, June 16, 2015. In partnership with Twitch, the PC Gaming Show will be streamed live, and feature new game reveals, updates on beloved series, and perspectives from key PC developers.

Make sure to keep an eye on the AMD PC Gaming Conference website[www.pcgamingshow.com] and the DayZ Dev Twitter account for more information.

Back to Contents[]

Community Video: Always Burning

Youtuber The Running ManZ encounters Twitch streamer Always_OnTour in this short but exciting Solnichniy encounter. If you haven't checked out either of them - now is the time!

TheRunningManZ

Always_OnTour[www.twitch.tv]

Back to Contents[]

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Status Report - 14 May 15

05 月 14 日

Greetings Survivors,

This status report came a bit later than usual as we wanted to include some of the results and findings from this weeks experimental releases, as well as shed a bit of light on the intent of said releases. As we tread on into May, we'll be rolling 0.56 into 0.57 development with the intent of a regularly scheduled end of month release. Ramping up to this, you'll see frequent experimental branch updates and experiments ongoing on that branches servers.

As internally we spent time investigating server side performance, as well as the effect of various systems on production server performance we discovered abnormally high performance cost related to infected AI. As said performance should be lateral at a certain point, we've been fluctuating configurations and builds on the experimental branch to properly replicate the production environment and profile the exact location and behaviour of the source of the performance drop.

On the player side, we've made strong gains performance wise. We're seeing a gain of 4x higher performance per average player count, and this is instantly visible in gameplay. As the programming team moves ahead on investigating infected costs on server side performance, we'll be disabling infected spawning on stable branch servers (post-stable update)to ensure the highest quality of gameplay on that branch. Experimental will proceed with infected performance tests so we can as soon as possible return the infected to Chernarus en masse.

If you're curious how this work is going, once the end of the month stable update (0.57) releases - keep an eye on experimental branch.

I'm personally excited to see the gains on the player and gameplay side - we've still got a long way to go until feature complete, but I'm excited to chase you all across Chernarus.

Really not a bandit,

- Brian Hicks / Lead Producer

Standup Notes for the week of 14 May 15

(Note: Standup notes are not a change log - they are a quick high level look at tasks the teams worked on throughout this week)